“I’m the boss,” President Trump joked when he arrived a bit late to a meeting with G7 leaders in France Wednesday.
He is.
That’s what his detractors forget.
America is “the boss” again, the colossus.
Iran doesn’t bully us.
Israel doesn’t instruct us.
Europe can sneer at Donald Trump all it likes, but it’s a supplicant.
China respects us.
Canada bows.
Trump understands power, and it rests easy on his shoulders.
He joked about it at the G7 in his relaxed American fashion, and European leaders now get it.
They laughed along, but they understood.
By the time he had emerged from a glittering dinner at Versailles to fly home, he had signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Iran that has the great and the good worked up into a symphony of hysterical catastrophizing.
While they hyperventilate, Trump casually shrugs and says it’s just a framework for negotiations toward a deal, and if it doesn’t work, he’ll just bomb Iran.
“If I don’t like it, if they don’t behave, we’ll go right back to dropping bombs right smack in the middle of their head, OK?” he told the media on the sidelines of the G7.
What the naysayers don’t understand is that the 14-point memorandum Trump signed is not a deal.
It’s a political document setting out terms agreed by both sides for negotiating a final deal that would result in Iran agreeing never to produce or procure nuclear weapons, with strict oversight.
In the meantime, the MOU gets the Strait of Hormuz open and gas prices down before the midterms, easing domestic political constraints on Trump.
The period of negotiation toward the hoped-for final deal is nominally 60 days, but senior administration officials agree it could take longer — in other words, until after the midterms.
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Why do it now?
In return, all the US agrees to in the short term is to remove the naval blockade on the strait — for now — and allow Iran to sell its oil.
Why do the deal now when we had our foot on their throat?
After all, Iran can no longer be the bully of the Middle East.
We have knocked out their military, sunk their navy, degraded their industrial capacity and started to force open the strait, and at the same time we have crippled their economy with our blockade and with all the devilishly creative strategies Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has crafted into Operation Economic Fury, with version 2.0 ready to roll if the deal doesn’t get done.
But the reason for the memo now is that Iran cried uncle.
“We were getting between five and 8 million barrels a day out of the southern lane [of the strait], and that was increasing,” said a senior administration official Wednesday.
“Oil prices were coming down, and that was increasing our leverage, and I do think that that helped make them realize that our blockade was incredibly effective, and their blockade was losing.”
And for the first time, Iran was telling US negotiators they would agree to stopping all nuclear enrichment for at least 10-15 years, dismantle all their nuclear sites, and agree to full inspections.
“If they weren’t telling us that . . . we would have kept the blockade and kept squeezing them,” said the official.
The carrot at the end would be the lifting of all sanctions, releasing frozen funds, and a $300 billion investment fund funded by Gulf countries, but none of that happens until after the final deal is done, and only if Iran lives up to its end of the deal, with the exact structure and timing of staged events to be negotiated.
“This MOU basically was a political document,” says the official, describing the Iranians as “master p.r. guys and bulls–tters, so they’re out saying a lot of things, but at the end of the day we’re not agreeing to give them anything.”
The administration is realistic about the untrustworthiness of the Iranians.
“This is a one-in-a-million shot to change Iran’s way, but . . . the costs that we’re expending in order to do it are small relative to the upside of it succeeding.”
Trump will go along with negotiations as long as it suits him. He has more than two years left of his term, and it suits him to have the Iranian regime constantly in fear of bombs dropping on their heads.
“We do have the [midterm] elections coming up,” said the official.
“Getting the oil prices down, gas prices down is good. Let’s play with this for a couple of months, whether you make a good deal or not.”
By Wednesday afternoon, even the Republican Senate’s most flamboyant war hawk, Lindsey Graham, had experienced a change of heart after a conversation with Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff.
“After this discussion, it is my opinion that signing the MOU will be beneficial to the United States,” Graham said.
Wonders never cease.
“Whether or not the United States can reach an acceptable, verifiable deal with Iran regarding its nuclear program and other issues is yet to be determined, but I see little downside to trying.
“The economic stability that comes from opening up the strait and the cessation of hostilities could create a pathway to peace well beyond the Iranian conflict.”
New Israel-Saudi ties
He’s talking about the expansion of the Abraham Accords and the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
That is one of the most significant differences between Trump’s Iran pathway and Obama’s JCPOA sleight of hand.
Trump’s negotiations have the support of Gulf allies, which Obama never had.
In fact the Gulf countries were opposed to Obama’s deal because they believed correctly that it just empowered and enriched Iran.
Unlike Obama, Trump is negotiating from a position of strength.
The armchair warmongers calling for a massive troop deployment to “finish the job” have learned nothing from the last 20 years.
This isn’t 2003.
The American people have no stomach for another endless, costly war in the Middle East.
Personally, having doubted Trump at times over the years, only to be proven wrong time and again, I think he’s earned the right to have his judgment respected when it comes to deal-making, and his resolve to use military force to make Iran pay if it tries to stiff us again.
A fascinating story in the Times of London this week points to another pressure point on the Iranian regime that is quietly playing out, no doubt with Trump’s full knowledge.
Women in Tehran are starting to drive around on motorcycles wearing skirts and without hijabs covering their hair, a crime that used to result in fines, jail and savage beatings.
“The morality police, for now, appear to have largely given up enforcing the rules,” the report says.
The Islamic Republic is crumbling from the inside, and Trump, alone, made it happen.